reviewed_on,comments,work_id,metaphor,theme,text,id,context,provenance,created_at,updated_at,dictionary
2007-12-23,"•REVISIT. INTEREST. Richly metaphorical. Poem is a response to Herbert's ""The State Progress of Ill"" and borrows metaphors of bestiary and ark from it. The allegory of the beasts is originally from Plato's Republic. •I've included four times: Bestiary, Ark, Theater, Forest",3489,"""Man is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be / Wisdom makes him an ark where all agree.""","","Man is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be,Wisdom makes him an ark where all agree;The fool, in whom these beasts do live at jar,Is sport to others and a theatre,Nor 'scapes he so, but is himself their prey;All which was man in him is eat away,And now his beasts on one another feed,Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed;How happy is he, which hath due place assignedTo his beasts, and disafforested his mind!Empaled himself to keep them out, not in;Can sow, and dares trust corn, where they have been;Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,And is not ass himself to all the rest.Else, man not only is the herd of swine,But he's those devils too, which did inclineThem to a headlong rage, and made them worse:For man can add weight to heaven's heaviest curse.As souls (they say) by our first touch, take inThe poisonous tincture of original sin,So to the punishments which God doth fling,Our apprehension contributes the sting.To us, as to his chickens, he doth castHemlock, and we as men, his hemlock taste.We do infuse to what he meant for meat,Corrosiveness, or intense cold or heat.For, God no such specific poision hathAs kills we know not how; his fiercest wrathHath no antipathy, but may be goodAt least for physic, if not for our food.Thus man, that might be his pleasure, is his rod,And is his devil, that might be his God.Since then our business is, to rectifyNature, to what she was, we are led awryBy them, who man to us in little show,Greater than due, no form we can bestowOn him; for man into himself can drawAll, all his faith can swallow, or reason chaw,All that is filled, and all that which doth fill,All the round world, to man is but a pill;In all it works not, but it is in allPoisonous, or purgative, or cordial,For, knowledge kindles calentures in some,And is to others icy opium.As brave as true, is that profession thenWhich you do use to make; that you know man.This makes it credible, you have dwelt uponAll worthy books, and now are such a one.Actions are authors, and of those in youYour friends find every day a mart of new.(pp. 200-1)",8946,I've included the entire poem,Reading Bamborough's The Little World of Man (15),2004-07-15 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:33:52 UTC,""
2011-03-12,"•The majority of references to ""soul"" in the Bible appear in Psalms.•I've included this entire Psalm. It is rich with figuration.",3514,"""As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.""","","1: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. 2: My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? 3: My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 4: When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. 5: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. 6: O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar. 7: Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. 8: Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life. 9: I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? 10: As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God? 11: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
(Psalms 42:1-11)",9066,Psalms,Searching KJV at UVA's Electronic Text Center,2003-07-15 00:00:00 UTC,2011-03-12 19:59:02 UTC,""
2009-07-31,"•The majority of references to ""soul"" in the Bible appear in Psalms.•I've included the whole Psalm.•The Oxford Study Bible doesn't use ""soul"" at all in the translation of this Psalm.

",3514,"""Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.""","","1: If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel say; 2: If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us: 3: Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: 4: Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul: 5: Then the proud waters had gone over our soul. 6: Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. 7: Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. 8: Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth. (Psalms 124:1-8)",9078,"",Searching KJV at UVA's Electronic Text Center,2003-07-15 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:33:57 UTC,""
2011-03-12,•Does the soul then taste words?,3506,"""Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.""","","24: Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. (Proverbs 16:24)",9081,"",Searching KJV at UVA's Electronic Text Center,2003-07-15 00:00:00 UTC,2011-03-12 17:24:35 UTC,""
,"•Weird set of verses! ""I am against your pillows""!•The OSB translates ""pillows"" as ""magic bands"" and ""souls"" as ""lives.""",3518,"""Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you?""","","17: Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, which prophesy out of their own heart; and prophesy thou against them, 18: And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe to the women that sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you?19: And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your lies? 20: Wherefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. 21: Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. 22: Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life: 23: Therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations: for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that I am the LORD. (Ezekiel 13:17-23)",9088,"",Searching KJV at UVA's Electronic Text Center,2003-07-15 00:00:00 UTC,2009-12-12 18:18:32 UTC,""
,"",3503,"""For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.""","","21: For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: 22: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: 23: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: 24: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. 25: For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (1 Peter 2:21-25)",9096,"",Searching KJV at UVA's Electronic Text Center,2003-07-15 00:00:00 UTC,2009-12-22 22:21:34 UTC,""
,"",3476,"""Amongst the which this last is of special use in moral and civil matters; how, I say, to set affection against affection, and to master one by another; even as we used to hunt beast with beast, and fly bird with bird, which otherwise percase we could not so easily recover.""","","But the poets and writers of histories are the best doctors of this knowledge; where we may find painted forth, with great life, how affections are kindled and incited; and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary; how they gather and fortify: how they are enwrapped one within another; and how they do fight and encounter one with another; and other the like particularities. Amongst the which this last is of special use in moral and civil matters; how, I say, to set affection against affection, and to master one by another; even as we used to hunt beast with beast, and fly bird with bird, which otherwise percase we could not so easily recover: upon which foundation is erected that excellent use of praemium and paena, whereby civil states consist: employing the predominant affections of fear and hope, for the suppressing and bridling the rest. For as in the government of states it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so it is in the government within.",17996,XXII,Reading,2010-10-09 17:06:00 UTC,2010-10-09 17:06:00 UTC,""
,"",3479,"""For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.""","","The second which followeth is in nature worse than the former: for as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words: wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times following; and not only respective to divinity, but extensive to all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae. For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms;--so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
(I.iv.5, pp. 183-4 in Modern Library edition)",19767,"","Reading Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 2 vols. (1962, reprinted Harvard UP, 1983), I, 233.",2012-05-11 14:39:19 UTC,2012-05-11 14:39:34 UTC,Beasts
,"",7390,"""Take this my endeauour I pray you in worth, cheerish and foster this deformed brood of my braine, in the lap (if I may so tearme it) of your good liking.""","","Take this my endeauour I pray you in worth, cheerish and foster this deformed brood of my braine, in the lap (if I may so tearme it) of your good liking, and in loue esteeme it faire thogh badly penzeld ouer, to wish as Daphnis said to Dam
[GREEK]Qui minime sunt pulchra, en pulchra videntur amāt
If the happie Daemon of Vlisses direct not the wandering planet of my witte within the decent orbe of wisedome, my stammering pen seeming far ouergon with superfluitie of phrase, yet wanting matter I answer with the poet one only word inuerted [...]
(Epistle Dedicatory)",20177,Epistle Dedicatory,Reading,2013-05-16 16:25:10 UTC,2013-05-16 16:27:00 UTC,Animals
,"",7390,"""Therefore Iulian the Apostata who had flood of inuention, although that whole flood could not wash or rinch away that one spot of his atheisme, he (though not knowing him a right) could say the body was the chariot of the soule, which while it was well manag'd by discretion the cunning coachman, the drawing steeds, that is our head-strong and vntamed appetites, being checkt in by the golden bit of temperance, so long the soule should not bee tost in craggy waies by vnequall and tottring motion, much lesse be in danger to bee hurled downe the steepy hils of perdition.""","","[...] For if the soule by reason of sympathizing with the body is either made an [Greek] or a [Greek] either a nimble swift-footed Achilles, or a limping slow Odysseus, as hereafter we intend to declare, good reason the body (as the edifice or handmaid of the soule) should be knowne as a part of Teipsum for the good of the soule. Therefore Iulian the Apostata who had flood of inuentiō, although that whole flood could not wash or rinch away that one spot of his atheisme, he (though not knowing him a right) could say the body was the chariot of the soule, which while it was well manag'd by discretion the cunning coachman, the drawing steeds, that is our head-strong and vntamed appetites, being checkt in by the golden bit of temperance, so long the soule should not bee tost in craggy waies by vnequall and tottring motion, much lesse be in danger to bee hurled downe the steepy hils of perditiō. [...]
(Chapter I)",20180,Chapter I,Reading,2013-05-16 16:29:51 UTC,2013-05-16 16:29:51 UTC,Animals